Boulder Crest Foundation is the home of Posttraumatic Growth. The idea of something beautiful emerging from a place of pain and suffering is central to the philosophy of Posttraumatic Growth and at the core of our Warrior PATHH program. Warrior PATHH started as a seedling in 2014, when we delivered three programs to 22 veterans. Warrior PATHH has grown into a nationwide movement, and in 2023, along with our Avalon Action Alliance Warrior PATHH Partners, we delivered 136 Warrior PATHH programs to 981 members of the military, veteran, and first responder communities.
The drivers of this growth are both positive and negative. Our nation’s heroes continue to suffer. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ 2023 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report documented how the veteran suicide rate increased between 2020 and 2021, reversing the trend of decreased rates in 2019 and 2020. The number of suicide deaths among first responders also grew between 2021 and 2022, with the highest increases seen in the firefighter and law enforcement communities. It is likely that the actual suicide numbers are much higher than what is reported. In addition, suicide is not the only indicator of struggle, and far too many members of the military, veteran, and first responder communities live lives of quiet desperation.
Despite experiencing a higher rate of suicide than their civilian counterparts, the communities we serve are less likely to seek out mental health services. Mental health challenges still carry a stigma in these workplace cultures where the attitude has traditionally been, “suck it up.” Struggling veterans and first responders are concerned about a potentially negative impact on their careers if they utilize mental health services, and, as with more and more Americans, wait times for and the cost of health services are additional barriers to care. Those who do seek help often find the mainstream approach to mental health does not address their needs.
This was the experience of many of the combat veterans who came to stay at Boulder Crest for Family Rest & Reconnection Stays starting in 2013. Late night “table talk” between the veterans, their spouses, and Boulder Crest’s Chairman and Founder Ken Falke planted a seed in Ken’s mind: if the mainstream approaches to mental health care are not working for our nation’s heroes, what would work? Ken’s quest to answer this question led him to Dr. Richard Tedeschi, the founder of the science of Posttraumatic Growth, and Dr. Bret Moore, a former U.S. Army psychologist, and ultimately to the creation of Warrior PATHH.
In a relatively short period of time, Warrior PATHH grew to the program we know today: a robust and effective alternative to the traditional narrative of diagnosis, diminishment, and dysfunction; one that speaks to the possibility of growth and continued service to one’s community and country after trauma. This new narrative of hope and potential speaks to mankind universally, but especially resonates within the communities Boulder Crest Foundation serves. Graduates of the first PATHH programs returned to Boulder Crest to become PATHH Guides and help support their brothers and sisters who are still struggling. PATHH graduates spread the word of PATHH’s transformative effect on their lives and as more people graduated, more people sought out Warrior PATHH.
Boulder Crest Foundation established a second location in 2017, and in 2019 we co-founded the Avalon Action Alliance to begin the process of growing a nationwide Warrior PATHH Network. By the time last year’s Warrior PATHH Year in Review report went to press, Boulder Crest Foundation had teams at our Arizona and Virginia locations, a mobile training team and six Warrior PATHH partners – Big Red Barn Retreat (South Carolina), Camp Southern Ground (Georgia), GratitudeAmerica (Florida), Permission to Start Dreaming (Washington State), Sheep Dog Impact Assistance (Arkansas/Missouri), and Travis Mills Foundation (Maine). A seventh PATHH Partner, Eagle Oak Retreat in Italy, Texas, was scheduled to commence Warrior PATHH delivery in early 2023.
This still was not enough to satisfy the growing demand for Warrior PATHH. “The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for,” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist), and the word is out that Warrior PATHH is helping people do just that. We stood up a second mobile training team that conducted seven Warrior PATHH programs between June and December 2023, and second teams in South Carolina (Big Red Barn Retreat) and Arkansas (Sheep Dog Impact Assistance). In September we launched the Struggle Well Experience specifically for first responders with the goal of reducing their program wait times.
Boulder Crest Foundation’s exponential growth did not come at the expense of program quality and transformational outcomes, as you will read on the following pages. Warrior PATHH continues to reduce the symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress (by 60%, up from 58% in 2022), depression (54%), and anxiety (54%) of those who attend; and Posttraumatic Growth went from improving by 56% in 2022 to 65% in 2023. Warrior PATHH graduates report that they are more physically active, have better nutrition habits, and read more than before they attended PATHH. The myPATHH mobile app has a community of nearly 3,000 people who use the app for continued education, community, and accountability. PATHH program outcomes are demonstrably sustained and graduates remain part of a larger community that supports their continued Posttraumatic Growth.
Our work is not going unnoticed. In a significant win for our advocacy efforts, June 13th was named PTG Awareness Day in a proclamation signed by Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI). The proclamation reads, in part, “I commend Boulder Crest Foundation for their outstanding contributions in the field of trauma recovery and their development of the Warrior PATHH program. The commitment and dedication of Boulder Crest Foundation […] to helping Veterans, first responders, and others affected by trauma are deserving of the highest recognition.” June is PTSD Awareness Month and features PTSD Awareness Day, but this nearly exclusive focus on the negative aspects of struggle is a major part of the challenge we face. It saps people of hope and can make them feel their best days are behind them. Boulder Crest works every day to change this narrative and offer hope, possibility, and growth to everyone with whom we come in contact.
The first of the 10 Truths About Struggle that we discuss is “Struggle has value.” Warrior PATHH helps those in the military, veteran, and first responder communities see this value and learn to utilize the principles of Posttraumatic Growth to transform their struggle into strength. We help our nation’s heroes see that their best days are still ahead of them and that they can be of continued service to their community and country. We have a long way to go until Posttraumatic Growth is a commonly-used word in the national dialogue about mental health care, but we are committed to doing what is required to make that a reality.
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